I'm proud to point out that Sapphire is the first FrontRow 2.0 plug-in that we have successfully installed. For those unfamiliar with Sapphire, its a media browser plug in for FrontRow. Sapphire will identify TV Shows and Movies based on the files names, and assign metadata and cover art based on TV Rage, IMDB, and IMPAwards. But like most applications, we tested it out to get a personal look into the plug-in.

We installed Sapphire on our Mini HTPC to give it a good test run. The installation was straight forward and identical to installing AppleTV plug-ins. It instantly appears in your FrontRow menu, and will list the common media storage locations, such as external drives, ~movies directory, etc. We had it scan our iTunes Library and movies where we have several different types of movie formats. The scanning process is extensive and takes a considerable amount of time, but this should be anticipated. Our first run resulted in a crash, but the next scan ran flawlessly. Through its easy to navigate menu's we were able to assign the proper album art and meta data to our TV shows and movies. The Artwork pulled from these sources is good, but no the highest of resolutions. We also noticed if you want to add new media, you have to scan the directory again, as it does not automatically find new files. The IMDB Top-250 and Academy Award movie listings were some our favorite features.

Overall we have had a very positive experience with Sapphire. It does however duplicate the Movies and TV Show functionality of FrontRow, so we figure Sapphire is for more diehard media collectors.

Sapphire is a free download, and is still in a beta version, so don't expect a finished product, although we found it to be very polished.